“One happy thing about sound was that I could control the music, so I composed my own.
I tried to compose elegant and romantic music to frame my comedies in contrast to the tramp
character, for elegant music gave my comedies an emotional dimension. Musical arrangers rarely understood this. They wanted the music to be funny. But I would explain that I wanted no competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grave and charm, to express sentiment, without which, as Hazlitt says, a work of art is incomplete…. Nothing is more adventurous and exciting than to hear the tunes one has composed played for the first time by a fifty piece orchestra.” -Charles Chaplin, Extract from My Autobiography, 1964

Chaplin’s full original soundtrack from “City Lights” is now on youtube so you can listen from anywhere! Visit our Youtube channel or play the video above to listen.